


Gas Station Holdup

by jtjenna (pornographicpenguin)



Series: What We Will Find [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Hostage Situations, Humor, M/M, Marijuana, Recreational Drug Use, im sorry mikasa/armin fans it is mostly background but it is definitely there, shitty trigger discipline, vague mentions of ptsd, very little violence but there are guns fair warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:50:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pornographicpenguin/pseuds/jtjenna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Reiner and Bertholdt are the most inept criminals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Armin spills out of the driver's-side door in a mess of ratty blond hair and too-wide eyes.  "I am _never_ doing this again," he says, rubbing the crust from his eyes and yawning.  Jean, out on the asphalt on the other side of the car, snickers, but Mikasa shoots him a dirty look and he quickly shuts his mouth.

"Do you want anything, Armin?" she asks, her hand on his shoulder illuminated in the dim light of the flickering streetlamps.

"Just -- food," he says in a rather pathetic 'I-haven't-slept-in-twenty-hours' voice.  "Thank you, Mikasa."  She acknowledges him with a hum and a restrained pat on the back before walking straight off to the 24/7 gas station.  Jean spends a long second staring after her.

All of the doors to the car are wide open now, and Jean peers over into the back seat, where he finds Eren sprawled out as spaciously as possible over the bench.

"Eren, are you coming?"

Eren grunts irritably, then weakly shoves his foot in the direction of Jean's hip.

"Hey!"  Jean catches his ankle.  "What the hell?!"

"You're making noise," Eren explains.  "Stop making noise."

Jean scoffs, dropping Eren's limb.  The sole of his tennis shoe hits the outside of the vehicle with an ugly squeaking sound.  "Whatever.  Are you coming?"

Eren cranes his head up at and awkward angle to look Jean in the eye.  "Will you buy me pity food?"

"No," Jean says.

Eren grumbles, but starts to sit up.  Jean taps his foot -- as if he's actually forced to hang around until Eren gets around to actually moving.  "Do you want Jean to fill up the car, Armin?"

"Hey, don't --"

"No, it's my turn.  I'll do it."

"-- volunteer me for things," Jean grumbles as Eren climbs out on his end of the car, nearly stepping on Jean's toes in the process.

"Whatever," Eren answers, rather pointedly, and starts off towards the store.

\---

"I don't know, I just -- I said it was weird," Jean says, crossing his arms as he gazes into the refrigerated shelves.

"Because they're straight?" Eren asks, rather bored.  He's rather used to Jean's occasional derogatory comments about straight people.  They’re meant to be funny, he thinks, but he’s never quite gotten the humor.

"Wh -- _no_ ," Jean says, crossing his arms so tight it starts to look like he's hugging himself.  He glares defensively at the Gatorade.

Eren pauses, thinking.  "Because they don't have sex?" he asks, rather loudly in the middle-of-the-night quiet that hangs over the store.  Jean turns to him, making exaggerated shh-ing motions, glancing suspiciously over his shoulders.  A tired-looking man from the other end of the aisle gives them a look that seems to indicate they should seriously question their choices in life before subsequently rolling his eyes.

"Jean, you like shoving dicks down your throat.  Why wo --"

Eren is cut off by Jean's defensively quick reply:  " _So do you!_ "

The man at the end of the aisle sighs loudly, letting the refrigerated door slam shut.  He heads up to the front of the store, where Mikasa is already checking out.

"That's not the point," Eren mumbles.

"Well you just brought it up, so I think it's probably relevant!" Jean whisper-shouts.  

In Eren's peripheral vision, he can see Mikasa peer back at them from the other end of the aisle.  "I was saying it's not that weird to not want to shove a dick down your throat."

"That's a really specific example and you know it!"

Eren elbows him roughly in the side and says, "You know what I mean."

Jean grumbles, seeming to take the chance to back down, either due to lack of energy or the fact that Mikasa is storming their way and he would really like to be able to pretend he hadn’t been saying anything.

"You're an asshole," she says rather violently, grabbing Eren by the elbow.  Up at the front of the store, the girl with dishwater-blonde hair working the register apologizes to the tired (and now very grumpy-looking) man still in line, and disappears off to the right.  "My sex life is not your business, Kirstein."

"I'm on her side," Eren says, pointing at Mikasa.

Jean, at a loss for words, stutters incoherently for a second before saying, "Yo-you know, I was just -- joke -- "

Just out of Eren's line of sight, the door swings open.

\---

Armin listens to the pump whir, making that distinct slurping sound.  The entire place reeks of gasoline, it's two in the morning, and Armin has a headache.  He places his cheek against the cool glass of the car and leans.

There are only two other cars in the station's parking lot, and given the station's generally remote location and the wee hour of the night Armin's surprised by even that.  So, of course, he looks up when he notices another car pull into the lot, but he doesn't think much of it.  No, Armin's more preoccupied with the fact that he is bone-shakingly tired and they're still a good five hours out from home -- and there's no way Armin's going to be able to sleep at all with Eren and Jean in the car.  More often than not, if the two aren't making out like horny sixteen-year-olds, they're either fighting or giving each other the cold shoulder.  Which is how they normally act, he supposes, but the entire dynamic is exaggerated beyond all reason when they're trapped in a tiny, enclosed space for hours.  And it’s not like Armin can just leave.  

Yeah, there truly is no way he's doing this again.  Armin would rather spend a couple extra bucks and just buy a plane ticket.  He wonders if there's an Excedrin Migraine in the glove box.  He could really use it.

Two people step out of the car that just pulled in.  Armin gazes at them absentmindedly, his face slowly sliding down the glass of the back window of Mikasa's car.  His cheek is shoved uncomfortably up into his eye, but Armin doesn't quite have the presence of mind to care.  He won’t have to drive after this, hopefully he can get some sleep….

The two men head straight for the glass front doors with a sense of purpose not quite befitting of people out here so late at night.  Armin would expect them to be more...wandering, tired, subdued.  Just less sure of themselves in general.  Maybe they’re nightshift workers, or something.

Armin watches the two of them -- one blond, one brunet -- walk into the store and pause in the entryway, looking around.  And then, from weirdly-shaped lumps in their jackets, each pulls out a handgun.

The gas pump clicks off.

\---

"Sorry, I'll be back in just a second," the twenty-something behind the counter says, not nearly as apologetic as those words would usually warrant from people in retail.

Levi, with his one, lonely jug of milk sitting on the counter, twitches.  "Seriously?" he asks, but the girl has already disappeared out the side door.  It shuts with a heavy _clang,_ the click of a lock behind her.  "You have got to be shitting me," he says, rubbing at his right temple, where he swears he can feel his blood vessels start to clench up.

And, on top of that, he can hear the other twenty-somethings bitching at each other in the back of the very tiny gas station, their voices rising and the tone of the conversation becoming more hostile.  Levi cannot believe he is going to have to listen to their weird sex arguments while he waits for this girl with the fucking clown-appropriate makeup cached on her face to get back from her fucking _smoke break_.

The door opens, the hinges creaking with an irritating, grating noise that makes Levi's head throb.  And when he turns to take a look at the yet more people walking into the store, it is yet more twenty-something douchebags.  Levi starts to wonder if there's going to be some kind of raucous young-people gathering.  He wonders if it's meant to be for douchebags who like to talk about their sex lives very loudly in public.  A support group, maybe.

It would make sense, Levi thinks, as he tries to tune out the argumentative stuttering and -- oh, that sounded like a kick.

But he turns his attention back to the two men standing in the doorway -- they look to be in their late twenties, really, so not as bad as the rest of the people in the place at that moment.  The one in front is blond, and bulky, a line of sweat shimmering over his brow.  Levi can see individual drops dripping down into his eyes, which are open a little two wide and glint on the surface with something dangerous.

_Glint on the surface with something dangerous,_ Levi thinks to himself with a healthy dose of disdain.  The shitty romance novels have really started getting to him.

The other one stands slightly behind the blond one, taller, sweatier... _sketchier_.  He peers out over the aisles, craning his neck into the back, while the blond one refuses to take his intent (and rather unnerving) gaze off Levi.

Levi briefly considers telling them that yes, the store does, indeed, have beer -- because he's sure that's what they're looking for this late at night -- but decides against it.  They both look rather touch-and-go, ready to spring into violence at a moment's notice --

And there he goes again with the shitty fucking narration.  He seriously needs help.

Levi's right in the middle of chastising himself when they both pull handguns out from under their jackets.

He slowly raises his hands and takes a moment to appreciate that for once, his shitty narration had been spot-on.

\---

"Everyone get to the front!"

Eren is struck with a sensation of absolute puzzlement.  He can't quite see the people who just walked in, but -- why would someone want him to do that?

The tired-looking man (who is actually in the front) has his hands raised above his head.  He turns his head toward the lot of them standing dumbly in the back.  "They have _guns_ ," he says, his voice dripping with contempt.

"What," Jean says.

" _They have guns_ ," the man says, with more frustration than any kind of panic.  Although it may just be that his expression is permanently that unimpressed.

Met with absolutely no response, his mouth twists into a scowl.  "That means, if you want to have your brains inside your head this time tomorrow, get your asses moving."  Eren blinks.  The man says, with a sarcastic bite, "Usually, when someone points a gun at you, you do what they say."

There's a long pause.

"Are we being punked," Jean asks.

With a vexed sigh Mikasa says,  “Why would anyone punk you, Kirstein?”

Indignant, Jean responds, “I could be famous, you wouldn’t know!”  

Mikasa stares at him dubiously.

And that is apparently the breaking point for the men with the guns, because they take the chance to storm into the aisle, barrels fixed right at eye level.  Not even a full second passes before Mikasa twists so that she's directly in front of Eren, pushing him behind her with a single hand -- it reminds Eren of when they were kids and she would hold an arm out to stop him from crossing the street and walking out into oncoming traffic.  Another split second passes before Jean decides to hide behind the both of them.  As Eren peeks his head over Mikasa's shoulder, he sees the tired-looking man roll his eyes, arms still held well above his head.

"Get to the front!" the blond one says, and this time the three of them do actually file up to the front of the store.  "Sit down!" the blond one shouts, his voice becoming almost startlingly loud in the utter quiet of the night.  

Eren, Mikasa, Jean, and the weird-looking dude -- who was apparently buying milk? -- sink down to the floor like obedient little ducklings, backs against the checkout counter.

The side door opens, hinges squeaking loudly.

"Shit," someone says out of eren’s line of sight, but he makes a vain attempt to peer over his shoulder and get a look at her anyways.  The blond man's gun switches from focusing on the four of them to someone else, behind the counter.  The weird-looking dude, sat next to Mikasa, sighs and rests his head in his hands.

"Get over here!" the blond one shouts, again using the much-too-loud tone.  "On the ground!"

She plops down next to the weird guy, reeking of weed.  "I should have just fucking left," she says.

The weird guy sputters.  "You actually considered -- !"

"Shut up!" the brunet barks.  He's got the right kind of force but not the right volume.  He's much too quiet to be scary.  

Although, Eren realizes as the brunet says with that same inadequate tone, "Someone call the police," and points the barrel right between Eren's eyes, the gun is probably enough to make up for that.

\---

"Um, hello?" Armin stutters into the phone.  "Yes, hi, 911, um -- my friends are -- are in a gas station, and I saw these people pull out some guns and I, uh -- " Armin pauses to take a long breath, remembering that in these situations it's very difficult for the operator understand the caller when they stutter too much.  "They're all sitting on the floor now, and the men are pointing guns at them."  

Armin breathes in, breathes out, and taps his fingers nervously on the wheel.  

"I-I'm in the car," he says.  "I don't know if they know I'm here."

Another pause.  Armin is forced to focus on the scene before him, something he can barely make out from here.  

"I can see them through the glass, yeah."

Armin sinks lower in the front seat as the operator tries and fails to speak to him in a soothing tone.  "Okay, okay.  Yeah."

\---

 "You!" the loud, blond one says, turning to point the gun directly at Jean, sitting at the end of the row and only kind of attempting to hide his larger frame behind Eren.  "Call the police."

"Uhm," Jean says, floundering.  "Okay, I -- I need a phone."

The loud guy pauses.  "Do you not...have one?"

"I -- I do!" Jean says, shoving a hand very nervously into his pocket.  "Right, I do!"

"Slowly," the loud guy says.

Jean freezes.  On the opposite end of their neat little line, the creepy-looking dude makes an aggravated noise.  "That doesn't mean stop moving, dimwit!"

"I did not -- I was moving!" Jean protests.  He goes right back to fishing his phone out of his pocket with decidedly panicked motions that are not in the least slow.

The creepy guy sighs as Jean shakily dials the number.

"Uh, hi!" Jean says.  "We, uh -- "  He pauses, then pulls the phone away from his head to ask, "What am I supposed to say?"

"Oh my _god_ ," the creepy guy says, and takes the chance to reach over both Mikasa and Eren to snatch the iPhone out of Jean's hands.

"Hey!" Jean says.  

Eren shouts, "What the fuck?!" as the creepy guy retracts a hand from Eren's thigh.

"There are two large, angry men with guns at the gas station on Steck and Mesa," he says.  A pause.  "No, this is not a prank call!" he barks.

There's a long pause during which the man makes annoyed faces at the phone and the rest of the station's occupants stare at him in rapt silence.

"I am perfectly calm," he says, sounding actually quite angry.  "Just get some people the fuck over here."  He hangs up the call with a very final thumb tap.

The two other men -- the tall ones, with the guns -- stare at him.  The quiet one's jaw goes a bit slack.  Jean can't really say that he's doing much better.

\---

"We should probably move behind the counter," the short man says.  He rests a hand over his knee, still gripping Kirstein's phone in his hand.  

The two large, sweaty men look at him with blank expressions.

"When the cops get here they're probably going to try to shoot at you through that glass, and there's no way I'm dying in the fucking crossfire."  Mikasa can’t really argue with that, but it rubs her the wrong way nonetheless.  It can’t be that likely that they’d miss.

"Uh," the blond one says.

The short man makes an impatient gesture, tapping his foot awkwardly on the floor.  It’s a forced gesture in an uncomfortable position, very deliberate.

After a moment:  "Everyone get behind the counter," the blond one concedes.

They all stand up, filing off to the side and behind the checkout counter with a disturbing kind of precision.

"Close the blinds, too," the short man says.  When their two -- kidnappers, Mikasa supposes, is what they are -- turn to stare at him again, he continues rather grumpily, "I'm not dying in the middle of nowhere in a fucking gas station."

She clenches her jaw tight, balling her fist up against the linoleum floor.  Why is he _helping_ them?

"Um," the blond one says again, taking a long moment before he seems to take that to heart.  Normally, Mikasa would say that he was thinking about it, but there seems to be absolutely none of that happening in his head.  "Okay, close the blinds."  He waves the gun rather unsafely at the small man, using it to motion towards the front door.  Mikasa takes solace in the fact that his finger is still far away from the trigger, but she can't really help herself when it comes to clutching Eren just a bit closer to her.

"Hey, Mikasa!" he hisses as she grips his upper arm in her hand.  The short man is fussing with the blinds, trying to get them closed, muttering something decidedly bitter about dust.

"Shut up!" she hisses right back, jabbing him in the side.

"Ow!" Eren complains, much too loudly.

"Hey, would you cut it out!?" Kirstein says to her, leaning over Eren.  Her eyes narrow when she realizes he has an arm wrapped around Eren's shoulders, pulling him farther away from her.

" _Children_ ," the short guy mutters from the entrance to the store.  "Would it kill you to shut your mouths and give our situation the appropriate gravity?"

"You -- You fucking hung up on the 911 guys!" Kirstein shouts.  Their kidnappers glance at each other, trading a look, but do not seem particularly inclined to intervene.  Foolish of them.

"And the three of you are fucking poking each other like you're sharing a goddamn bus seat on your way to the county fair!"  He scoffs.  "Fucking teenagers."

Eren's brow furrows in understandable confusion -- that was a weirdly specific simile -- and Jean sputters.  "I am not a -- "

"Kirstein, _shut up_ ," Mikasa says.  The girl who had been working the checkout counter giggles inappropriately.

"Thank god one of you seems to have a smidgen of intelligence," the short guy says, shooting the laughing girl a disapproving look.  He sits back down in between her and Mikasa.

"You could do to shut your mouth as well," Mikasa says, forcing a note of composure into her voice.

The short guy turns unimpressed eyes at her, the kind of anger someone who’s used to having their orders heeded written in the downward curve of his lips.

"Um," the quieter of the two kidnappers says.

The words spill out of Mikasa’s mouth, "Fucking helping them -- "

"Hey!" the quieter, brunet man speaks up.  It's immediately clear that his voice does not possess the qualities necessary to command a room.  "All of you, be quiet!"

The six of them sit in utter silence for a long moment.  Mikasa swallows.  She should remember where she is, and what's at stake.  She links her arm into Eren's.  Armin is safe, at least for now, but there's a very real possibility that they could both die he --

The sound of a stomach rumbling reverberates through the entire store.  She leans forward to peer at Kirstein over Eren's body.

"What?" he says.  "I'm hungry, okay?"

Mikasa presses her lips together.  Fucking Kirstein.

\---

"They're closing the blinds," Armin squeaks.  He finds himself unable to take his eyes off the front door.  The man standing there, apparently in charge of closing the blinds, meets his eye.  "Yeah."  His throat tenses up as he croaks into the receiver, "I can't see them anymore."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also just fyi all of this is written out i'm just editing it and posting it. in total it's about 18k

"Could we _please_ just get some food?" Jean asks.

Mikasa shoots him a dirty look, and he feels the need to explain himself.  "That is what we came here for, anyway, and I never got to eat, and now the adrenaline levels are going down..." Jean trails off.

The loud blond guy sighs and leaves the small space behind the checkout counter.  He's already within the sight of the glass double doors before the quieter one yells out to him, "Wait, Reiner!"

"What?" the loud guy -- Reiner -- says, stopping dead in the aisle to glance over his shoulder.

"They can see you through there!" the quieter one shouts, raising an arm held unusually close to his body to indicate the doors.

Reiner glances outside.  "There's no one here yet."

"Whatever, just -- " he cuts himself off, letting his arms hang limp at his sides, "be careful."

Reiner rolls his eyes a bit, but nods and continues over to the main part of the store.

"Here," he says, dropping an armful of various snacks in front of them.

Jean pokes at them for a second before deciding on a bag of chips and a Slim Jim.  The others also grab stuff, he supposes, because when he looks up there are things that are missing, but Jean doesn't really see it due to the fact that he's too preoccupied with munching on his potato chips.

"Could we also get something to drink?" Jean asks.

"Seriously?" the creepy dude mutters.

"What?  Hydration is an important part of -- " he says, bits of potato chip spewing from between his lips.  Down the aisle, the creepy guy's mouth pulls into a disbelieving expression of disgust.

Mikasa turns solemnly to Eren and says, "You're dating that."

"Okay, okay, hold on!" Reiner says, holding his hands up as he once again exits the little enclave, placing the handgun on the counter as he does.

"Reiner!" the quieter one shouts.

"What?" Reiner asks, exasperated.

"Don't leave your -- " the quiet one snatches the gun from the counter.

"Oh, yeah," Reiner says.  "Just let me grab some water first, Bertholdt."

Bertholdt -- which is apparently the quiet one's name -- grits his teeth and plops back down in the chair stuffed into the corner, wrist resting over his knee and gun pointed in the vicinity of his right foot.  The other sits on the ground next to him.  The both of them are named now.  That could be important, later, when they talk to the police, if they're not using fake names.

Reiner comes back with bottles of water, taking the time to hand one to each of them, and finally Bertholdt.

"Thanks," Bertholdt says, sounding a bit like he's losing his faith in humanity.  Jean can empathize.

Reiner sets his own bottle on the counter, and asks the girl sitting on the other side of the creepy guy, "How much for all of this?"

"What?" she asks like she hadn't been paying attention.  "Oh."  She shrugs.  "I don't know, just take it.  It's whatever."  And then she giggles, covering her mouth with a long lavender sleeve, much too carefree for the situation.  He wonders, dispassionately, if she's high.

Jean twists the cap and cracks open the seal on his own water bottle.  "Oh," Reiner says.  He pauses, staring at the lot of them sitting on the ground, backs pressed up against the glass counter.  "Oh!" he says.  "Give me the phone."  He motions towards the creepy dude, still holding Jean's phone.

"Oh, that's mine!"

"They'll try calling us on here," Reiner says.  "I'll keep it for now."

Jean, rather offended, is prepared to open his mouth to protest that up until the point where Eren jabs him in the side with his elbow.  "Shut _up_ , Jean," he mumbles.

Reiner seems to have totally missed that interaction, as he continues with a flat tone, "So, what are your names?"  

Something _thunks_ loudly.  Jean thinks it might be the sound of the creepy guy's head smacking into the glass.

"You," Reiner says, pointing to the girl on the opposite end of the line.

"Huh?  Oh," she says.  Again, like she hadn't been paying attention at all.  Jean would bet money that she's high as fuck.  He kind of wishes he was, also.  "Hitch."

Reiner purses his lips and nods, sagely.  "Like that's her real name," Jean murmurs bitterly to Eren, who gives him an annoyed look in return.

"You?"  He motions to the creepy guy.

"Levi," he says.  Jean expects something more, some kind of derogatory remark, but nothing like that happens.  Jean supposes he'll have to give up the moniker "creepy dude" now.

Up next:  "Mikasa."

Bertholdt coughs in the background.  The second gun is still resting on the floor by his foot.

"What?" Reiner asks.

"Mee-ka-sa," she says, slowly, sounding out all the syllables.

"Mikasa?" he says, getting it just about right.

She nods.  "Yes."

"Okay," Reiner nods.  "You."

"Eren."  He's got his thighs pressed to his chest and his ankles crossed, his arms around the tops of his knees.  Jean can feel his own thigh pressed against Eren's; Jean wonders why he's so calm in this situation, Eren is usually explosively angry in situations like this.  Although he can't really say that they've ever been in a situation like this before --

Reiner nods, then fixes Jean with his intent and rather unnerving gaze.

"J-Jean!" he says.  He only stutters because he's caught off guard.  The only reason.

"John?" Reiner asks.

"No, _Jean._ "

Reiner pauses.  "John?"

"J - E - A - N."

Reiner blinks.  "Jeen?"

"Stupid name, huh?" Eren says, grinning.

"Shut up, it's French!" Jean stutters, jabbing Eren in the shoulder with his elbow.

"Um," Reiner says.  He seems to decide on taking the path of ignoring them.  "I'm Reiner," he says, gesturing to himself, and then the other man.  "That's Bertholdt."

Jean can hear police sirens go off in the distance.  He swallows.

\---

"We know already," Levi says, impatience tinging his tone.  "If you honestly think we're not -- "

"What was that, again?" Hitch asks.  Levi bites the inside of his cheek.

"Reiner."  The blond one points to himself.  "Bertholdt."  He points to the brunet, sitting in the chair.

"Reiner," she points to the blond one, "and Bertholdt."

"Yes," Reiner nods.  

Behind him, Bertholdt taps his foot restlessly, sweat pouring down his forehead.  "Maybe you shouldn't tell them our names -- "

Levi runs his hand over his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.  There's only so much stupid he can take.  "A little late for that now, don't you think?"

Bertholdt's mouth falls open yet again -- Levi's beginning to wonder if he actually has some kind of problem with his jaw or if that just happens to be his resting expression.  Sirens are going off outside, growing in volume as the seconds tick by.  There'll likely be a call coming in soon.

"Unless you're using fake names, you're fucked."

Beside him, the Asian girl -- Mikasa -- shoots him a dirty, totally enraged look.

Reiner and Bertholdt glance at each other.  "It's not like they weren't going to know who we are once we told them our demands," Reiner says.  "So it doesn't really matter."

Oh, of course.  They have _demands_.

Bertholdt nods, crossing his arms.  The barrel of the gun jabs into his side.  (Levi physically cringes at that shitty, shitty gun discipline, but doesn't say anything.  Honestly, if either one of them ends up shooting himself in the foot, it's more help to Levi.)  The other one is still resting on the floor, on the far side by the leg of the chair.  Levi thinks he could probably make a grab for it, if he really needed to.  But he doesn't think that'll be necessary.  These guys aren't going to shoot them.  Levi has seen people who are ready to shoot before.  These two aren't even close.

"What are your demands?" he asks, resting his head against the glass of the counter and tries not to think about how dirty the floor is.

Mikasa stews next to him.  He can practically feel the animosity radiating off of her, like an aura of general bitterness.  Levi's felt it before.  He ignores it.

"We want our friend back," Reiner says.

Levi wants to punch himself in the face.  "Was he taken from you in the Great Rapture of 2012?" he asks, sarcasm dripping off his words.

Reiner's eyebrows wrinkle in confusion.  "She was arrested about," Reiner pauses, "twelve hours ago."

" _Christ_ ," Levi can't keep himself from saying.  "And you're holding us at gunpoint to ' _get her back_.'"  Twelve fucking hours.  Levi reevaluates:  these idiots might actually shoot them.

"It's not a bad plan," Reiner says.

Levi disagrees -- it's a plan with very little chance of success and a very large chance of extensive jail time.  And Levi is prepared to tell them exactly that -- but before he can, the phone rings.

Reiner has it pressed to his cheek in less than a second, answering Jean's phone with a, "Hello?"

Vague muttering leaks out from the other end of the line.  Probably introducing himself, or an untrained person asking what the two of them want.  Reiner blinks at the phone.  The voice on the other end stops talking, and he pulls the phone away from his face.  "What am I supposed to say?" he asks Bertholdt.

Bertholdt opens his mouth -- he looks a bit like a fish -- and waves his hands around, shrugging his shoulders.

"Fucking morons," Levi mutters.  "Tell them what you want, then _hang up_!"

"Uh," Reiner says into the receiver.  "We want you to release Annie Leonhart."  He pauses.  "From your custody.  Into ours."  He pulls the phone away from himself again, and awkwardly ends the call.

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with you."  The accusation comes out through gritted teeth.  Her clenched fists press against his thigh.  " _Helping_ them -- "

"We don't want to hurt you," Reiner says.  It sounds less like a reassurance or a vague threat and more like a blatant statement of truth.  Which, ironically, does reassure Levi a bit.

"I'm getting us out of here as soon as possible," he says.  "I know I don't want to be camped out in this shithole for longer than strictly necessary."  He turns to meet her eyes for the first time in a while, taking in her angry eyebrows and the sharp curvature of her jaw, the harsh exhalations of breath.  "And I doubt you do either."

She scoffs, turning away.  

\---

The phone starts to ring again.

"Don't answer it," Levi says.  "Let it ring."

They all sit in silence, Jean's phone buzzing against the counter.  Eren takes a moment to note that the phone is on silent, which he is somewhat grateful for given that he's pretty sure Jean's ringtone right now is 'Milkshake'.  And Eren has a feeling that if that started playing right now, Mikasa might actually lean over and strangle him.  Eren doesn't need to look at her to know how high-strung she is between her gripping his forearm hard enough to bruise and the positively murderous look she is currently giving the linoleum at her feet.

The buzzing stops.  Somewhere there's a police officer listening to an 18-year-old Jean attempt an awkwardly officious tone, "You've reached Jean Kirstein.  Please leave a message after the tone."

Another moment passes.  The phone rings again.

"Hey, Eren," Jean whispers, like he's trying to hide his voice under the loud buzzing of his phone on the glass.  It is most definitely not working.

"What?" Eren whispers back.

"How long do you think we'll be here?" he asks.

Eren shrugs.  "Dunno."

"Yeah," Jean says.  A moment of silence passes, where he looks nervously at the floor.  "Hey Eren?"

"Yeah?"

Jean grabs and squeezes Eren's hand ridiculously hard, opens his mouth and then says, "Um."  He turns his gaze back towards the floor.  "Never mind."

"O...kay?" Eren says.  Jean still has not let go of his hand.  Mikasa's nails dig into his arms.  And it's -- really starting to hurt, actually.

"Fucking _children_ ," the tired and now very, very grumpy guy says.  He had said his name a few minutes ago, but Eren's already forgotten it.  Jean's iPhone stops buzzing on the counter for only a moment before the store's own phone starts ringing.

"Shit, we've got a phone?" Hitch glances behind her, searching for the source of the sound.

"Don't answer it," the tired guy says again.  "Give it about ten minutes, then answer."

Reiner and Bertholdt glance at each other, nodding.

"Jean, could you -- " Eren says, attempting to keep his voice down.  Which is kind of stupid, he supposes, since he figures everyone can hear everything said no matter the volume.  "Let go of my hand?  That hurts."

"Uh, yeah, sure, sorry!"  Jean pulls his hand off in a heartbeat, resting his palms in his own lap.  The store's landline continues to ring in the background.

Very quietly, Mikasa lets up on his forearm.  Eren breathes out a sigh of relief.

Over at the other end of the small space, Reiner's eyebrows knit together and his lips part a bit.  It's a decidedly pitying look.  For the first time since this whole thing started, he sits down, resting his back against the wall on the other side of the space behind the counter.  His giant, gangly legs force Eren and Jean to scoot even farther back despite the fact that Reiner has his knees pressed up against his chest.

"You know, I really am sorry about this, guys," he says.  "We didn't really mean to do this to any of you all, we just..."  He trails off, looking up at Bertholdt, who glances off towards the front door, resting his chin in his hand.  "We just need our friend back."

Looking rather unimpressed with that whole speech, "Well, you made a shitty decision if you didn't want to endanger other people," the tired dude says.  Reiner fixes his gaze on his feet.  The silhouette of flashing blue and red lights can be seen through the blinds.  "And you can't exactly change it now."

"Bertholdt, maybe we -- "

The phone rings again.  Bertholdt stands, snatching it off the counter before Reiner can finish whatever he's saying.

"Yes, the hostages are alive," Bertholdt says.  "No, no injuries."

Across from Eren, Reiner frowns, clutching at the legs of his pants.

"Just -- release Annie Leonheart, and then let us go.  That's it.  That's all we want."  The gun trembles in his hand.  Reiner's is still sitting, totally unattended, under the chair Bertholdt had previously been sitting in.  Which -- wait --

Before the thought has even entirely formed in Eren's head, tired guy is lunging across the floor to grab at it, and all of a sudden Reiner's on top of the guy, and Mikasa has both him and Jean squished against the corner of the counter.  Someone shouts "Shit!" and glass shatters and Eren catches a peek of the chair toppling over.

"Ow," Eren says.

"What the fuck just happened."  Jean's words come out muffled due to the fact that his cheek is pressed solidly against Eren's shoulder.

Over Mikasa's shoulder, Eren can see Bertholdt frantically pointing the gun at the floor, saying, "Reiner, get up!"  It's supposed to be shouting, Eren knows, but doesn't reach quite the right volume or tone.  He can't see what's going on (Mikasa's head blocking a good two-thirds of his vision), but there's the sound of shuffling, of chair legs crashing into the floor, and then, "Get back!  Back in line!  Everyone back in line!"

Mikasa very slowly scoots off of both Jean and Eren, and the three of them resume their places against the back of the glass counter.

The tired guy, on the other hand, is a much different story.  He stands up, slowly, and turns around.  The second gun is very noticeably not in his possession, but in Bertholdt's, clutched at his side.  The first is in Bertholdt's other hand, directed point-blank at the tired guy.

Who now looks a lot less tired than he did before.  His lip is split and there's a gash veering from his temple to his right eyebrow.  "Shit," he mutters as he collapses back into the place he had previously been occupying.  Hitch, on the other side of him, stares at him with wide eyes, looking vaguely traumatized and very confused.

"Fuck," Bertholdt says, resting his forehead on the heel of his palm.  "Fuck!"  Reiner slowly stands up, looking rather dazed himself.  "Keep track of this," Bertholdt says, placing the gun in Reiner's palm.  "Please."

"Yeah, alright."

Reiner looks down at the tired dude, who gazes up at him with a defiant spark in his eye.

Eren swallows, hugging his knees to his chest and resting his head on his arms.  Damn, does he not want to be in here.

 


	3. Chapter 3

A few minutes pass in utter silence, either phone ringing every few seconds.  Bertholdt religiously hangs up either line the moment it starts go off, staring angstily in the direction of the glass double doors.  All of them are perfectly silent, the tension in the room is so thick it could be cut with a knife -- no, no, fuck that, fuck that stupid fucking cliche --

"Oh, shit, you're bleeding!"  The girl sitting next to him -- Hitch -- shouts, directly in Levi's ear.

"I am," Levi says.  He's been wiping at the blood dripping into his eye for a good three minutes.

"We should -- um," she says, floundering, hands uselessly raised in front of her.  "God damn, I'm high as fuck."

"We know," Levi sighs.

"Oh."  She stares at him for a long, long moment before turning to Reiner.  "Can we get something for his head?"

"Can't cross the door," Reiner mutters.  His voice has reached new gravelly lows.

Her upper lip pulled up and her eyes squinted, she asks, "Huh?"

"The," Reiner makes a messy gesture towards the front aisle, "pathway.  We'll get shot at."

"Oh," Hitch says, eyebrows furrowing into a well-groomed line.  "We should still fix his head, though."

"Yeah," Reiner agrees.

Levi sighs.  "I'm fine.  It's not very deep, it's just bleeding a fuckload."

Reiner grunts in response.

"No, no, we should fix it!" Hitch says, her hair flopping about her chin as she shakes her head.  "But what..."

"First Aid Kit?" Levi suggests.

Hitch gazes at him with blank hazel eyes.  "What?"

Levi sighs.  He really shouldn't have expected anything more.

\---

"Holy shit," Jean whispers.  "Holy shit."  The silence of the room breaks, and he's right back to crushing Eren's hand in his own, Eren's pinky being pressed painfully into the line of his index finger.  

"Yeah," he agrees, glancing at Mikasa.  Her eyes are dark, her scarf pulled up over her mouth.

"So we just..." Jean pauses.  "Wait?"

"Yeah," Eren says.  "We wait."

He punches the cheap, plastic flooring.  Eren does not want to be here.  Trapped in this little walled-off enclave, breathing the same stale air he was two fucking hours ago.  He can't even stand up, he wants to --

"Hold it!" the tired man says.  "Don't -- "

When Eren looks over, Hitch is -- trying to tear up the bottom of her shirt?  "Fuck, this is not working," she says, and then proceeds to pull the entire thing over her head.  

Eren does not think he has ever seen three full-grown men recoil so much at the sight of a bra.  Reiner very nervously averts his gaze while the tired guy physically scoots away, very pointedly keeping his hands close to himself.  Bertholdt's mouth flops limply open not unlike the the jaw of a dead fish.  Actually, Eren reevaluates:  that just seems to be Bertholdt's default expression.  

Hitch grips the bottom of her shirt in her teeth and rips out a strip from the bottom.  

"What's going...?" Jean says from behind Eren, loosening his vice grip around Eren's palm.

She shrugs her shirt back on, now about two inches shorter.

"Give me your head," she says.

"Um," responds tired guy.

They stare at each other in an awkward standoff for a long moment before tired guy gently plucks the strip of lavender fabric from her fingers.  "I'll do it myself."

Hitch nods, satisfied.  "That's good," she says.  "I'm probably too high to do it anyway."

Tired guy looks at her, then at the three of them.  "Yeah," he says.  "Sure."

"Although, now that I think about it," she says as the tired guy drabs at the blood pouring from his forehead.  "I could've just used _your_ shirt."

"Yes," Levi agrees.  "You could have."

\---

"Are you gonna answer that anytime soon?" Jean asks.

The landline rings again, shortly followed by Jean's phone.  His poor, kidnapped phone -- poor, kidnapped him.  He wonders if he'll get it back by the end of this.

Bertholdt does not respond.  Reiner also gazes expectantly at him from his spot on the floor, but no answers are forthcoming.  How long has it been?  An hour or two, probably.  Creepy guy -- Levi -- had told him to answer it a while ago, but Bertholdt hadn't responded even then.

Bertholdt doesn't seem angry though.  Or -- no, he seems angry, but it reminds Jean of a concerned parent -- mad, sure, but more disappointed, concerned for their child's well-being.  Except much more weird.  And sweaty.  He hasn't looked at Reiner other than to give him disapproving glances.

Jean sighs.  This is fucking boring.

"So what exactly is it you guys...do?"  Both Eren and Mikasa turn to stare at him.  Jean shrugs.  "What?  If we're gonna be here for a while..."

Reiner shifts his shoulders, trying to work himself out of the awkward position he's sprawled into given the decided lack of foot space.  "We -- "

"We rob banks," Bertholdt says forcefully, glancing over his shoulder at Reiner.

A pause.  "Right..." Reiner says, turning his gaze back to the line of hostages.

"Um," Jean says.  "W-What about you?" he glances down the line towards Levi, who now has a strip of lavender fabric wrapped around his forehead.

"Huh?" he says.  There's a mess of shaggy dishwater-blond hair on his far shoulder, which Jean takes a second to realize is the head of the high girl.  Hitch?

"W-What do you do?" Jean repeats, getting more nervous by the second.

"Hmm," Levi says.  The ends of his undercut stick out from the makeshift bandage at hilarious angles.  "I'm a writer."

"What do you write?" Eren asks.

Levi sighs.  "Shitty-ass romance novels, mostly."  Hitch softly snores from his shoulder.

That seems to pique Eren's interest.  "Wait, really?"

"Yeah," Levi says.

Jean glances at Eren.  Eren glances at Jean.

"Why?" Jean finally asks.

"I used to write short stories," he says, "about Afghanistan."  On his shoulder, Hitch mumbles something unintelligible.  "Turns out no one wants to hear about dirt and death and dumb fucking politics."

Jean props his cheek up with the heel of his hand, letting it slide up into the vicinity of his eye.  "Are you sure you're not just a shitty writer?" Jean asks.  It's not an unreasonable assumption.  The guy speaks in fucking alliterations.

"That too," Levi says just as Eren jabs his elbow into Jean's ribcage.

"Ow, what the fuck?!" Jean shouts.  "He agreed with me!"

"That's still a shitty thing to say!" Eren says.  Levi rolls his eyes, and turns his head the other way.

Silence settles over the group yet again, except for the obnoxious ringing of the store's landline.  "What about you three?" Reiner eventually asks.  The gun is pressed against the slope of his lower leg, his knees drawn up close to his chin.

"We all go to UCLA," Mikasa says.  Then, through gritted teeth, "Going back home to see our parents."

Reiner nods.  "You'll get to see them soon, I promise."  Eren twitches next to Jean, the muscles in his shoulder going tense.  Mikasa continues to glare.  Reiner swallows nervously.  "So you two are...siblings?" he asks, indicating Eren and Jean with a flick of the barrel of the gun.

Jean outright laughs into the heavy atmosphere of the room.  "God, no."

"We're dating," Eren says.

Reiner's eyebrows furrow, a little look of confusion written on his face.   _Jean_ is inclined to think that it's about the fact that they're both men, but chooses not to say anything about it.  Wrong place, wrong time.  Wrong...quantity of guns in the room.  "Oh."

"She's my sister."  Eren points to Mikasa.

"Ah."  

Silence reigns once again.  The phone ringing is starting to become more like white noise than anything else.  Jean rests his head against the back of the counter.

"Going home to meet his parents?" Reiner asks.

"Huh?" Jean says before he catches on.  "Oh, yeah.  Kinda."

"That's always hard."

"Well -- " Jean says, before Eren picks up for him.

"My dad's probably not going to care until he finds out that he's a film major," Eren says.

"There's nothing wrong with being a film major!" Jean says, crossing his arms.

"I never said there was," Eren says.  He bounces his foot up and down next to Jean's.  "It's better than Biology."

Reiner nods.  "Um, what about you?  Mikasa.  What are you majoring in?"

She pauses a long time before answering.  "Also Biology.  Pre-Med."

Eren makes a few understated choking noises, and Jean is kind enough to pat him on the back.

"What?" Reiner says, actually vaguely alarmed.

"It's hard to explain," Jean says.  "His father would -- "

"Only pay for me to go to medical school," Eren interrupts.  Really?  Jean asks himself.  Again?  "But I am not actually in Pre-Med."

"Oh," Reiner says.

"I forgot," Eren says to Jean.  "He's going to kill me."  Eren's voice doesn't seem to indicate the level of dread that Jean would expect from a statement like that.

"Probably," Mikasa agrees.

They lapse into awkward silence again, quickly running out of topics to cover.  The phone continues to ring, high-pitched and grating.  On the other end of the line, Levi extends his legs out, his lips pressed into a thin, decidedly constipated line.

The phone rings again.

\---

"You know if you don't answer that in the next ten minutes, they're probably going to send in a SWAT team."

Bertholdt's head whips around to meet Levi's eyes with an uncomfortably intense gaze.  Levi schools his features into a serious expression.  In actuality, he has no idea about the standard procedure involving hostage situations this far in.  He's just hoping Bertholdt will pick up the phone, because this is fucking ridiculous.

He snatches the receiver and presses the big, clunky thing to his face.  "Hello?"

There's a pause.  Levi glances down at the girl sleeping on his shoulder, and realizes with a muted sense of horror that she's drooling on his shirt.

"...Bertholdt."  Another pause, in which Bertholdt glances suspiciously around the room.  "Fubar," he answers.  The kid with the undercut at the end of the line snickers loudly.

"Fubar?  You've gotta be kidding me."

Bertholdt nods.  And nods again.  He pulls the receiver away from his mouth, covering it with a hand.  "He says his name's Erwin."  It's a statement as much directed at Reiner as it is at Levi.

Reiner nods, like that is some very important information he just received.  Which -- Levi supposes it is, but in turn supposes that Reiner has no idea the importance that it has.  Erwin Smith, no doubt.  It doesn't surprise Levi one bit that he's here.

Bertholdt goes back to the phone.  "Five," he says.  "No, they're all fine."  He glances over to Levi very quickly.  "One guy's a bit scratched up."

A longer pause, this time.  Levi stares at the opposite wall.  Erwin.  It's not like he has friends just lying haphazardly about.  But -- well, he's not entirely sure he'd call Erwin a 'friend'.  They served together.

"Your boyfriend out there?"

Levi stirs, looking up.  It takes him a second to realize the question is directed at Mikasa, rather than at him.

She stonewalls him, glaring with the ferocious kind of fire dancing in her -- oh, what the actual fuck.  Levi rubs his temples.  He really, really needs to move on to another genre.

"Yeah.  Armin?"  It's the boy at the end of the line that speaks up.  "He's out there."

Bertholdt nods, again.  Levi doesn't miss the guilty tilt of his lips or the quick glance downward before he once again fixes his gaze on the vacillating red and blue lights filtering in through the glass front doors.

There's chattering on the other end of the line.  It's just loud enough that Levi can make out the sound of a voice but not the distinct words.  "Yeah, it's me and Reiner."

Over on the other end of their small enclave Reiner is squished in next to them, invading the leg space of the two teenaged boys on the far end.  And really, isn't that just a wealth of telling body language, right there?  Sitting as far away from Bertholdt as possible, facing the hostages.  Someone feels fucking guilty.

"Names?" Bertholdt mumbles into the receiver with that same lack of confidence he's displayed throughout this entire episode.  Interesting how he and Reiner had practically switched dynamics, with Bertholdt running point now.  Obviously it was because Reiner was shit-all competent, but interesting nontheless.

Hitch, on his shoulder, stirs.  Levi tries very hard not to think about the dried saliva no-doubt crusting on the fabric of his shirt.

"Huh?" she mumbles.  "Oh, sorry!"  She rockets up into an upright position in no time flat.  "I didn't -- "

Levi begins, disbelievingly, "You have issues with slobbering all over my shoulder yet no problem whatsoever with stripping your fucking -- "

Bertholdt cuts him off.  "What are your names?"

"We have _all_ already told you our fucking names, dipshit," Levi says, his irritation quickly rising.

Bertholdt bristles, his shoulders tensing and his chest puffing out, but only says, "Your full names."  In response, he feels Hitch's fingers dig into the meat of his shoulder, curling against him and away from Bertholdt, vaguely aggressive and decidedly armed.

"Levi Ackerman."

Bertholdt repeats his name over the line, grumbling in a low, dissatisfied tone.  "You?" he asks, nodding at Mikasa.

"Mikasa...Ackerman," she says.

Bertholdt pauses.  He begins, suspiciously, "Are you -- "

"Are you two related?" says an equally suspicious voice.  Eren pops up into Levi's line of sight from Mikasa's other side, eyebrows furrowed into an accusatory line.  

Jean scoffs.  "You're her _brother_ , you moron!"

"Not by blood," Eren says.  "She could be hiding secret relatives in places, I don't know!"

"That is hands down the stupidest thing I have ever fucking heard you say, Eren."

Hitch leans over Levi's lap, leaving him pressed uncomfortably back into the counter in an attempt to avoid touching her.  Honestly, the girl has an essentially nonexistent concept of personal space.  She squints.  "Has anyone ever told you you look like Harry Potter?"

Both boys stop dead in their tracks, blinking a few times with blank, confused eyes and furrowed eyebrows.  Finally, "Me?" Jean asks.

"Mikasa Ackerman," Bertholdt repeats into the receiver, which seems to put an end to that entire conversation, for which Levi is grateful.  He sighs, and rests his head against the counter.  Beside him, Mikasa does the same.

"Hitch Dreyse," the girl next to him says.  The more and more he looks at her -- and the less she reeks of weed -- the younger she seems to look.

Bertholdt repeats her name into the receiver, closely followed by "Eren Jaegar" and "Jean Kirstein."  There's more chatter on the other end of the line which Bertholdt only sort of listens to judging by the decidedly blank expression on his face.

"Hey," Levi nudges Reiner, currently taking the chance to stare very usefully off into space.  "What time is it?"

Reiner glances at his watch.  "Uh, 4:20 AM," he says.

Hitch snickers, and then starts to giggle uncontrollably, clutching her sides.  "Four-twenty!" she exclaims.  Levi leans a few inches in the other direction.

The guy at the end of their line chuckles, commenting, "She's high as fuck."

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock," Eren replies.

"No, no," Hitch replies, still clutching at her stomach.  "I think I'm coming down."

"That's great," Levi says.  "Thanks for sharing."

"You're welcome," she says, grinning like she has just come up with the most clever thing.  "But really, no, I think I am coming down," she says, taking a deep breath.  "Actually -- hey, Bertholdt," she says, nudging the blond man sitting across from them with her foot.

"That's Reiner," Levi says.

"Oh."  Hitch blinks.  "Reiner," she corrects herself, "do you wanna smoke some pot?"

"Um," Reiner says at the same time as the other two boys just about lose their minds laughing.

"Yeah, yeah, I've got some more," she says, spinning around to fish her purse out of a cabinet underneath the counter they've been leaning on for a few hours.  "And I'm coming down, and you guys look like you could really use some time to chill out, so -- " Levi glances up and sees Bertholdt gaping at her openly as she pulls out a couple of blunts.

"Oh my god," Levi says.

"What?" Hitch asks, turning to him with a set of accusatory eyebrows.  "Weed helps you calm down!"  Her eyes go big and wide.  "Do you want some also, Levi?"

"No," he says.  "No, I don't."

"Are you sure?" she asks.

"Yes," Levi says.  "I am sure.  I am very sure."

She looks like she's preparing to protest his decision with that indubitably stubborn outlook only found in people that young, but gets cut off by Bertholdt shouting into the line, "Annie Leonhart, that's all we want!  Just hand her over and this'll be done!"  He slams the handset onto the base with a loud crashing sound, his face flushed three different shades of red.

"Dude," Hitch says as Bertholdt heaves in his breath, standing menacingly over the landline.  She holds out her hand.  "You want a blunt?"

Levi closes his eyes.  They are going to be here for a while.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hitch is a public fucking embarrassment


	4. Chapter 4

Eren is asleep.  

Asleep on Jean's shoulder, actually, which is a rare occurrence because usually if someone tried to sleep on Jean he would stand up and leave them to crash into the ground or the bench or whatever because it's not really Jean's job to be people's pillow -- but there's not really an option of standing up here, of course, and Eren looks ridiculously peaceful sleeping.  Even though Eren's hair is tickling Jean's chin and his head weighs probably like ten fucking pounds (because it's full of rocks, obviously) and his breath smells like death, Eren is still -- he's so cute.  His hair is all shiny and pretty and his eyes (Jean is perfectly aware that they are closed, he is just remembering) are all bright and green and _passionate_ and his expressions are usually so fucking intense but right now he's all limp and relaxed and gorgeous and Jean kind of wants to just pet his face or kiss his forehead or --

Jean glances up to find Mikasa glaring at him.

He tells her without hesitation, "I am so fucking gay."

She makes a contemplative noise.  "I thought you were bi, Jean."

Jean sighs.  "You know -- " he says, just a little too loudly.  "You know what I meant."

\---

"Reiner," Bertholdt says.  "You talk to the guy."  He holds out the receiver.

"Uh," Reiner says.  It takes him a second to tear his eyes away from the scene unfolding in front of the both of them -- the two gay kids sprawled all over each other.  "Sure."

Reiner takes the phone and sits in the chair.  He listens to the guy on the other end -- Erwin -- probably more intently than Bertholdt had been, but he still glances over his shoulder at the two kids, one of them asleep and the other arguing quietly with the Asian one over his head.

Bertholdt rests his hip on the edge of the counter, peering disapprovingly at Reiner's expression, his eyes all shiny and his lip pouted out the slightest bit.  And his gaze is fixed on the group of kids on the floor -- which is pretty problematic, Bertholdt thinks, because Reiner happens to be lonely and gay and very empathetic.

"Focus," Bertholdt mutters, and Reiner's eyes flick up to him before he turns back around, facing the phone entirely.  Bertholdt checks to see if he still has his gun in his hand, which he does -- good.

There's a chance this whole operation might not be a total failure after all.  Bertholdt really, really hopes it isn't.  He can't really afford for it to be.  Annie -- something gross and ugly rises in his esophagus when he thinks of her, her getting caught, the things that are done to people like them when they do get caught.   _Annie_.  They need to, _need_ to get her back.  They need to not fuck up.

It occurs to Bertholdt that if he wanted them to not fuck up this chance, he should probably be actually talking to the guy in charge of getting them what they want.  That would probably help.

A bead of sweat rolls down his temple.  "We've got to get Annie," he says.

Reiner glances up at him, whispering, "Hold on," into the handset before fixing Bertholdt with a stern gaze, his eyes glimmering a washed-out green in the flashing blue and red lights from outside.  "That is why we're doing this."

"Yeah," Bertholdt says.  "Yeah."

"As riveting as this conversation is," Levi, the short man with the bad haircut, says, "would you mind elaborating on what exactly you two are trying to accomplish here?"

Bertholdt does not miss in the slightest the baldly terrified look on Hitch's face as Levi speaks to them, and Bertholdt certainly doesn't miss the immediate outpouring of guilt from Reiner.  It's in the slope of his eyebrows, the downward quirk of his lips, and more than that the feeling just seems to be rolling off of him in waves.

Bertholdt bounces his foot against the linoleum.  God, they are so fucked.

"Annie," Reiner says.

"You've said.  Who the fuck is Annie?"

"She's --"

Bertholdt interrupts rather belatedly, "Don't tell them anything, Reiner."  He clenches his jaw shut tight.  It's unbelievably hot in their little room.  His back is probably totally drenched with sweat by now.

"What exactly am I going to do with that information?" Levi asks.  "Call up the negotiator on the phone I don't have to tell him about your really damn fucking obvious feelings of affection for whoever the fuck?"  His hands fall to his thighs with a muted slap.  "I'm a writer," he says, and the admission does come across as sincere, if not self-deprecating.  "I'm curious."  The heads of the three kids at the end of the aisle pop up over Levi's shoulder.

Another drop of sweat rolls down his cheek.  Lines of tension screech through his shoulders and neck, and it's so tight and uncomfortable he feels almost like he can't breathe.  "Annie was our...boss," he says, swallowing thickly and heavily, like there's a ball in his throat.

"Our ward," Reiner says, nodding.  The receiver dangles in his hand, hanging limply at his side.  Bits of tinny speech prick at Bertholdt's ears.  He bites the tip of his tongue.

\---

"That made even less fucking sense than it did before," Levi says with a sigh.  Honestly.  These two are probably worse storytellers than Levi himself.

Reiner sighs himself.  Hitch looks at the two of them with eyes now tinged less with fear and more with curiosity.  "She was our..."

When it looks like Reiner is going to trail off yet again, Levi decides he's had enough.  "Stop," he says.  "Start from the beginning."

"Well, she --" Reiner stutters.

"She came in sometime last year..."

"From Germany," Reiner clarifies.  Bertholdt, meanwhile, holds himself bent over slightly, like he's about to throw up.  Levi can't help but notice the sweat cascading down his back and arms, his pit stains probably enough to be considered a great work of art just by their sheer enormity.  "They sent her from Germany."

Bertholdt continues, "Our first assignment."

"For what?" Levi asks.  "Assignment for what?"  Yet more vague nonspecifics.  Getting information out of these two is proving to be like trying to take a dump when you've been backed up for days.

Reiner, once again, opens his mouth to answer before Bertholdt cuts him off with an awkwardly-intoned, "Bank-robbing."

Levi pauses, taking a second to fully process that spectacularly shitty lie.  " _'They'_ sent someone over from _Germany_ to help you _rob banks_."

Hitch giggles.  Reiner shifts uncomfortably in his chair while Bertholdt says, flatly, "Yeah."

"Uh-huh," Levi replies, just as flatly.  He makes a note to ask Erwin about it later.

"Anyway," Reiner continues.  "Annie stayed with us for a few months.  Her cover was that she was my sister."

"And got married to me," Bertholdt says.

Levi nods in understanding.  "So you could rob banks."

"Yeah," Bertholdt says, looking even more nervous than usual.   _Sweatier_ than usual.  

“We were just her contact,” Reiner continues, ignoring Levi’s comment entirely.  “And we -- ”

“We got her caught,” Bertholdt says.

His face is so laced with self-loathing and grief that Levi briefly considers not immediately following up that admission with, “Robbing a bank?”

“Yes!” Bertholdt shouts, stomping his foot for emphasis, his voice jumping in volume to a level that completely drowns out the racket from outside, the violent gleam of someone about to snap in his eyes.  And all of a sudden Hitch is pressing herself into his arm with the terror exclusive to those mentally unprepared for the violence of the battlefield.  Levi hasn’t seen it in years.

“Man up,” he tells her, nudging her shoulder with his, consciously fighting the urge to pull away.  He briefly considers reassuring her that there’s nothing to fear, that Bertholdt and Reiner won’t hurt them, but he’s honestly not sure about the truth of that statement.  “We’ll be fine,” he says instead, because he’s very certain of that.  There is absolutely no chance he’s dying on the linoleum floor of a shit-stained gas station.  It’s not going to happen.

Hitch gazes over at him with wide, emotive eyes and it makes Levi's skin crawl in ten different kinds of restless ways.  “Okay,” she says.  Her mouth quirks up like she actually has some manner of faith in him.  It’s an experience Levi hasn’t been privy to for -- again, years.

Levi pauses.  He really needs to stop using ‘years’ as a euphemism for the war in his own goddamn head.

“So you got her caught,” Levi says, turning his attention back to the two men with guns looming over the group of them.  He steels himself, weeding out all the sarcasm and doubt in his tone before he says, “Robbing a bank.”

Reiner nods in confirmation.  Bertholdt only gazes out in the direction of the body of the store.  “So you decided that taking a couple of people hostage was the best way to remedy that situation.”  It’s an actual effort to not sound actively derogatory of that line of thought.

Reiner shrugs.  Bertholdt’s shoulders tense.

There are so many things Levi could say to that.  He could talk about how unlikely this plan really is to work, or the fact that it would take a good few weeks to get to that point if it was going to, or how the two of them are obviously a couple of bumbling morons (which they definitely, definitely are).  But he doesn't.  None of those options would be particularly astute given the situation -- a bad fucking idea.  No, instead he says, “Do you want to be here for the next two weeks?”

Bertholdt blinks, turning back towards them.  “Not really,” Reiner says.  He doesn't sound particularly passionate.

“But we need to get Annie back.”

Reiner nods, grunting rather unenthusiastically.

“What?” Bertholdt spins on him.  From the new angle Levi is graced with the information that, by this point, his pit stains are truly remarkable in their magnitude.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Reiner, totally caught off guard, stutters, his eyebrows flying up.  “Uh.”

“Whatever,” Bertholdt says.

“I agreed with you!” Reiner protests.

Well.  This isn’t quite how Levi expected this to go.

“We have to get Annie back!”

“So you’ve said,” Levi mutters to himself, unable to hold back that aggravated remark.  He makes an effort to shove down the worst of his irritation.

Reiner remains silent, glancing between Bertholdt and the group of them squatting on the floor.  “Yes,” he says after a long, empty pause.

“We’re responsible,” Bertholdt says.

Reiner agrees, “We are.”

“For Annie.”

“Sure,” Reiner says.

Bertholdt turns a stern eye Reiner’s way, angry and desperate.

“Anyway,” Levi pointedly interrupts.  Fighting is really, really not where he wants this to go.  “If you want to get out of here in a reasonable amount of time, you’re going to have to do something a little more violent."

“No,” Mikasa says, totally unexpectedly.  Honestly, she had been so quiet Levi had almost forgotten she was there.  “That’s not happening.”

Levi turns, schooling his expression to be that terrifying level of unimpressed he had used many times before to stop his subordinates’ bullshit in its tracks.  He’s rather surprised when he meets her eyes and finds and equally unimpressed expression gracing her features.

“No,” she says, one more time, her arm across Eren’s chest, pushing her brother back into the counter so he has to strain his neck to be able to see around her.  Levi would laugh if she wasn’t so clearly serious.

“Do you really want to be in here for two weeks, risking getting shot every time you get up to take a shit?”  Nobody has brought it up yet, but there really is no other way.  The bathroom is on the other side of the building, and in order to get to it someone would have to cross the wide open space left by the glass doors.  Those two sure picked a shitty place to hold up.

Levi receives no true response to that statement, just Mikasa’s glare and another insistent, “No way.”

“He does have a point,” Jean says.  Levi can’t help but roll his eyes, because the tone of voice that douchebag uses is probably the most pompous, ignorant thing Levi’s heard in a solid five years.  “They’re never going to turn the girl over if they don’t think Reiner and Bertholdt are an actual threat to us.”  He shrugs.

“Great,” Mikasa says.  “You can be the one who gets a gun held to your head.  Have fun, Jean.”

All the color immediately drains from his face, leaving Jean even more pale than he had been previously.  Levi can’t deny the satisfaction he gets from watching the smug look get wiped clean off his face.

“Wh -- Mikasa!” Eren protests, apparently uncomfortable with the thought of his boyfriend getting his brains blown out.  Only a split second later, something in his expression hardens, the line of his lips going hard and his eyes widening the slightest amount, and -- oh, he does look kind of like Harry Potter.

“I’ll do it,” Eren says.

Jean and Mikasa both simultaneously shout, “No!”

Levi rolls his eyes.  Bunch of melodramatic idiots, honestly.  “Hey,” he says, “Shut up.”  He is paid absolutely no attention.

\---

“Eren, cut it out!” Jean exclaims, tugging down on Eren’s arm.  He’s actually surprised with just how panicked he is right now -- Eren is a huge idiot on a regular basis, but it usually doesn’t make Jean’s pulse pound in his ears or his breath come more quickly or make him feel all rigid with fear.  He gives another rough tug on Eren’s arm, sending him crashing back down on his ass.

Across Eren’s body, Jean catches a glimpse of Mikasa’s expression -- fraught and panicked, her eyes open wide and her lips pulled down into a scowl.  It takes Jean a second to realize that his face is contorted into the same one.

“You’re not doing that!”  Jean presses down on Eren’s shoulder as a means of keeping him in place.  Mikasa does the same on his other side.  

Eren takes up glaring at the both of them with violent, betrayed green eyes.  “Jean!” he barks, loud enough to drown out the sirens outside for a brief second.  “What are you -- someone has to -- ”

Reiner interrupts, “No one has to do anything.”  Jean looks up at Reiner’s own green eyes and stern expression, and it occurs to Jean all at once that their kidnappers never actually approved this plan of action.  They had actually been planning their own probable deaths.  He’s a fucking moron.

Eren pouts and slouches, his arm dragging along the material of Jean’s shirt as he slides down the side of the counter.  Jean releases a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding in.

“We’re just going to wait,” Reiner says.  “There’s no need to do anything violent.”

From the opposite end of the counter, Jean hears a quiet, bitter, “Too late.”  Levi continues, “You are way too fucking late.”

\---

As soon as the negotiator had gotten there, Armin had been pushed off the scene along with a person -- Armin is fairly sure they’re a friend of someone else who’s inside, but he’s honestly not even remotely sure.  They hadn’t answered any of Armin’s questions about what was going on, replying with shrugs or “I don’t know”s or just subject changes, but talked to the negotiator -- an intense, generic blond guy; Armin hadn’t caught his name -- like they knew him.

All-in-all, Armin feels kind of confused and really, really stressed about the whole situation.  He doesn’t know anything about hostage situations and Armin has spent the last few hours trying to avoid the slowest, most interminable burn of anxiety.  And it doesn’t really help when Armin hears someone in the periphery of his attention, “They’re not responding.”

“And there’s also this really, really cool thing about neurons -- “

“Wait,” Armin says.

They do not wait in the slightest.  “ -- the axon -- which is the long windy part that the action potential travels down -- can actually go for however long, so the longest one -- “

Armin listens, and hears it again.  “They’re not responding.”

“ -- is actually from the bottom of your spine all the way down to your -- “  Armin wonders if he actually heard that or if it was just his own brain repeating it for him.

“Excuse me!” Armin shouts, waving to someone over the police line, bending his body over the bright blue barrier, caution tape catching in his belt.  He is completely ignored.

He doesn’t notice that the chattering about the nervous system has come to an abrupt halt until he hears, “You should really just chill out.”

Armin turns towards them, rather incredulous.  “There are -- “ he stutters, “ -- men with guns -- “ his breath starts to come in harsh, short pants, “ -- in there.”  He can feel his chest tightening up, the threads of his thoughts fraying into a thousand different strands.  God, why is he so fucking useless?

The person -- Armin still doesn’t know their name, he had asked but not gotten a response, so he just keeps having to refer to them as “the person” in his head and it’s really ridiculous, really dumb, really fucking dumb, really dumb -- leans down into Armin’s personal space, peering up at his rather panicked expression, bottom lip pulled down, eyes gone wide, with a weird, uncomfortable curiosity.  “Are you having a panic attack?”

“No!” Armin screeches much too loudly.  A few of the officers and official-looking people glare over from behind the lines.  His knuckles go white around the plastic of the barrier.

“Really?  Because you look like you’re having a panic attack.”  They tilt his chin up, peering at him through glasses that catch the early morning sunlight in their lenses.  “Pupils dilated, respiration up.”  They press two cold fingers to his jugular, and remark after a few seconds, “Increased heart rate.”

The decidedly unconcerned and vaguely fascinated tone simultaneously gratifies Armin, but also makes him want to punch them in the face.  Out of the corner of his eye, he stares at the doors of the little gas station and feels his mind try to fracture his body into a million separate pieces.

So, so fucking useless.

“You shouldn’t worry,” they say.  “Erwin only lets people die when it’s convenient for him.”

The words reach Armin’s ears with such a confidence that it takes him a second to realize what, exactly, they just said.

“W -- “ Armin starts.

“And it’s really in his best interest to get those people out of there alive.”  They nod, crossing their arms.

Armin lets his jaw fall limply open.  “What the fuck,” is all he says.

“That is his job.”  They grin, the edges of their eyes crinkled with an oddly manic gleam.

Armin focuses on the weird, pulls all of his remaining energy up at once, and sits down on the cool asphalt, pulling his knees up.  He rests his head on his arms.  “Who even are you?”

The person crouches down next to him, their larger body casting a shadow over him.

“Eh,” they shrug.  “So, back to what I was saying before…”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look there's more :D

“I have to pee,” Jean says.

“Ew,” Eren protests, rather dispassionately.

Jean rolls his eyes.  “It’s a natural bodily function, Eren.”

“Still ew,” Eren says, murmuring into the dark hairs dotting his arms.

Honestly.  Jean is dating such a child.  “We’ve been here for like five fucking hours, don’t tell me you don’t have to fucking pee.”

Eren's eyes slide off to the side and he quiets into a silence that turns more stubborn with each passing second, his foot tapping nervously against the linoleum and his arms wrapped tightly around his knees.

“I have to pee, too,” Hitch pipes up from the other end of the line.

Reiner and Betholdt glance at each other nervously.  Do those two ever stop being nervous?  Probably not.  At this point he is beginning to find their incompetence both increasingly tiresome and worrisome.

“Um,” Reiner says.  “We can’t really…”

No one speaks a word, and the sirens continue their incessant wailing outside.  Absolutely incessant.  Jean feels like that high-pitched whining is going to haunt his dreams.  And probably ruin his hearing in the process.  Not to mention, he’s getting a migraine, and his bladder is throbbing, and Eren has stopped being pretty and started to just be annoying and fickle -- which is fairly normal, Jean supposes, but he’s also started giving Jean palpitations with his weird self-sacrificing attitude, which is just -- something unpleasant.

And he has to pee.

Nobody speaks for a few minutes.

“Come on, don’t just drop it!” Jean protests when the rest of them seem content to let the subject drop.  “We’re all gonna have to pee sometime.”

Bertholdt gives the glass door a meaningful glance.  “We can’t really….”

Jean nudges an empty water bottle with his foot, and it does occur to him -- but he really does not want to have to resort to that.

“Maybe you should just give yourselves up,” Jean suggests rather brokenly and not in the least seriously.  But god, in the few seconds that sits in the air, it does sound like a good fucking idea.

What really does not sound good is the response he gets:  “We have to get Annie back!”

Which, okay, isn’t exactly unexpected, but what Jean can say is unexpected is the world-ending noise that explodes in his ears when Reiner fires the gun straight up into the ceiling.  It goes off like -- well, a gunshot.  Jean just about actually wets himself.

“What the fuck?!” he hears someone say.  The sirens outside seem to escalate to a chaotic volume, louder than Jean would have thought possible -- which seems really weird considering the fact that his ears are still ringing with the noise, like an -- well, it is an explosion.  Or maybe it’s just the people waiting outside.  The phone rings like mad.

“Well,” says weed girl.  “That probably worked.”

The phone continues to ring.  

“Are you not going to answer that?” Levi asks.  But instead of sounding like he’s lost his faith in humanity -- which is kind of how Jean feels right now, and how the dude has chosen to address their kidnappers for most of their time here -- his voice sounds shaky and strained, like bad acting.

As Bertholdt reaches across Reiner to pick up the receiver, Jean belatedly realizes that he’s got his hand in a vice grip around Eren’s upper arm.

\---

With the utmost calm, Erwin asks, “Is anyone hurt?” 

“No,” says the grainy voice from the other end of the line.  Erwin recognizes it as Bertholdt.

He leans back onto his heels, shoving a hand into his pocket, holding the cell phone up to his ear.  “Then why fire?”

“I didn’t, Reiner did.”  His voice is nervous, edgy, quiet.  The guy hasn’t spoken to him much before, and there is very clearly a reason for that.  Lack of self-confidence, hesitant in action.  Probably smarter than Reiner, though, more of clear thinker.

“Oh,” Erwin says, pretending that he is very, very interested.  He’s hoping this will work, this new strategy will be able to hold their attention.  It’s a unique problem, one he hasn’t had to contend with before.  The two of them aren’t particularly unpredictable as far as he can tell, pretty rational if not overflowing in raw intelligence.  The most dangerous kind of person to put in charge of hostages, in Erwin’s opinion.  And he can’t seem to get them to stay on the line.  “Why did he fire?”

Dead silence.

“I don’t know.”

Erwin’s eyes are drawn to a young boy with a truly awful haircut right behind the barrier, on the ground with Hanji crouching next to him.  Subject change:  “Remember that if you need anything for the guys in there,” he says, forcing a pleasant tone, “I can get it for you.”

“We just want Annie back,” Erwin hears over the receiver, quiet enough to be a whisper.

“Are you sure?  You guys in there must be getting hungry, have to go to the bathroom, something…”  In the background he can make out some angry shouting.  He’ll be damned if that isn’t Levi.  Erwin reminds himself to kick his ass, later.  When it’s clear that Bertholdt has stopped listening entirely, he pries, tries to make out the conversation rather than trying to get their attention back.  But it proves to be nearly impossible, given that Reiner, who is the only one close enough to the handset to be heard communicates almost exclusively in grunts.  Bertholdt remains as quiet as before, his breathing drowned out the by the wail of the sirens.

Erwin pulls the phone away from his body, pressing it into the fabric of his shirt.  “Hey!” he shouts at one of the officers at the scene.  “Would you turn those damn things off?”  

The man -- more like a kid though, Erwin has to concede when he sees wide eyes turned towards him -- stutters, “I can’t -- “

“Then find someone who can!” he barks.  “I can’t hear the damn phone.”

The kid scampers off in the same direction he had been going before, and Erwin turns his attention back to the phone, waiting a few long seconds before the sirens shut off and he can at least attempt to hear what’s actually going on in that gas station.

\---

“Oh my god, dude, are you okay?”

Levi is very much not okay, actually -- but he doesn’t say that for exactly two reasons.  The first is that he wouldn’t be caught dead admitting that he was right in the middle of a flashback to any of these morons, and the second is that he is actually not okay because there’s the sound of gunshots ringing in his ears and the grime of dirt and dust in every single one of his pores, the stench of piss and shit and clatter of empty shells and something rising in his chest like bad heartburn --

“Is he having a panic attack?”

The one with the undercut is not nearly as quiet as he thinks he is.

“Should we...do something?” he stage-whispers to no one in particular.

“Maybe we should give him a paper bag?” Hitch says in the same obnoxious tone loud boy had just used.

“No,” Levi interrupts, loudly.  “I’m fine.”  He shoves down the urge to say something rude and probably mean and instead chooses to ignore the bag comment.  He’s too exhausted to deal with that kind of -- tomfoolery.

Tomfoolery -- god, he sounds like an old person.

“Are you sure?” Hitch asks, a hand knotted gently in his sleeve.

“Your sheer stupidity brought me out of it,” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.  So much for not saying anything mean.

Hitch frowns, crossing her arms and drawing her hand away.  “Wow, rude.”

Beside him, Mikasa lets out a long sigh.  Reiner stares at the lot of them, the gun still in his hand, pressed against his thigh.  He has his finger right on the trigger, and the combination of anger and worry that crawls through Levi’s exhausted veins at that is enough to make him feel like giving up on humanity entirely.

“Maybe you should -- “ Bertholdt starts.

“I’m fine!” Reiner barks.

And that Levi really does not get.  What had set him off in the first place?  It was the other one that was so anal about getting his precious girlfriend back.  This guy had been having mood swings all over the place, and it just struck Levi as -- unstable.  Not the kind of guy you would want to be near you in possession of a gun, which Reiner definitely was.

Levi sighs, putting his full weight on the counter.  He can deal with everything else perfectly fine, but apparently the sound of a gunshot sets him off.  How useless.  He grinds his teeth, feeling the grooves work against one another, the spikes of pain it sends shooting up to his temples.

He’s losing his patience with this situation very quickly.

His half-gallon of milk still sits lonely on the counter.  It’s probably spoiled by now.

\---

With a sigh, Erwin hangs up the call.  That had not gone well.  This whole thing had not gone well.  They were starting to approach the six-hour mark and he hadn’t even been able to negotiate some food in there, or a bathroom break.  He just couldn’t keep their attention.

The idea churns around in his mind.  He has the influence, the track record, and the connections to pull off what he wants to.  The chances of people dying increase exponentially, of course, but they’re likely to be officers, not civilians.  But the chances of Erwin being able to pull this off -- he is almost convinced he can pull this off -- are high enough to satisfy him, enough for him to disregard the heightened chances of death and escape.

He starts to dial another number.  It’s time for a radically different strategy.

“Get Annie Leonhart on the scene.”

\---

“Okay, are we ever going to get to pee?” Hitch asks, frowning.  Her hair has started to fan out at the ends, making the entirety of her head look rather like a mushroom.

Neither Bertholdt or Reiner answer her, just glance nervously at each other, and then away.  Mikasa grinds her teeth.  This is fucking ridiculous.

Levi sighs.  “Probably not,” he says, kicking out his feet.  He no longer seems to be panicking, which is good.  On her other side, Eren has fallen asleep on Jean, who remains decidedly away, staring hollowly at the opposing wall.  The dark bags under his eyes seem especially prominent, given the circumstances.  She turns away.  

The sirens have stopped wailing outside.  The phone hasn’t rung for a good hour.  Things are almost peaceful.

Mikasa hates it.  She feels like she’s in some weird kind of danger limbo -- not really in immediate danger but definitely not out of it.  No way for her to protect Eren.  Barely any way for her to stop him from doing something stupid.  Everything is making like it’s fine but her veins are still thrumming with adrenaline and she itches to do something.  But there’s nothing she can do to speed this up or help the situation or -- anything.  There’s nothing she can do and it is driving her absolutely nuts.

The phone rings.  Reiner picks it up with an unexpected swiftness, and Eren jerks awake.

“‘as goin’ on?” Eren slurs at her.

“Hello?” Reiner says into the receiver, thereby answering Eren’s question.  His voice is deep and strong, without that unhinged twinge to it as there had been earlier.  She supposes that’s at least a little comforting.  “You what?”

Reiner nearly drops the receiver, looking up at Bertholdt with grave, energetic eyes.  “They have Annie.”

Bertholdt rises out of his chair.  “They have Annie?”

“What did he just fucking say?” Levi grouses quietly, but goes entirely ignored.

“Does that mean we’re getting out of here?” Hitch asks, perking up a little.  Purple eyeliner is smeared under her eyes like a bruise.

“Yeah,” Reiner says, smiling.  Hitch smiles back, twisting her fingers in the material of her jeans.  

Turning to Levi, she asks, “You wanna get high after this?”

He opens his mouth, expression indicating he’s going to respond with some kind of derogatory remark, but he promptly shuts it again.  “Yeah.”  His skull thunks against the glass of the counter.

“Awesome,” she says, grinning.  “Great last minute, huh?”

Levi closes his eyes.  “Sure.”

\---

In reality, it takes a good hour before they’re “ready” for the transfer.  Reiner and Bertholdt negotiate for a car and in return have to leave their guns on the floor inside the station.  It’s all very orderly and very clearly some kind of trap.  

Levi sighs.  Whatever, it’s not like he’s going to help them at this point.  He wants to get out of here.  He also has to pee.  The five of them sit around, jiggling their legs and clicking their tongues, waiting very eagerly for the moment at which they’ll be let out.  Or maybe that’s just Levi.

He’ll have to see if he can get a glance of Annie if he can -- he’ll probably end up writing about this godforsaken incident at some point, and he’ll need all the reference he can get.  

Reiner yet _again_ points his gun at his own foot.  Levi has the feeling that Annie’s probably a thousand times more competent than these idiots.  Hitch is probably more competent than them.  Hell, the guy who’s been hiding behind his boyfriend for the entire fucking time is probably more competent than them.

“How much longer do they say it’ll be?” Levi asks, tapping his foot angrily on the linoleum.  It’d been an hour now, with no news.

“Processing takes a long time,” Bertholdt says, his eyebrows folding down into what would normally be considered the domain of the eyes.  Angry, then.

Levi crosses his own arms, tilting his head back against the glass.  This could potentially take longer than they had already been in here -- although Levi really hopes not.  With Erwin in charge, however, there’s no doubt that things could and currently were being sped along.  Levi knew he had the influence -- and he would like to think that it had occurred to Erwin that none of them had taken a piss in about five hours.  Things were starting to get desperate on this end.  Undercut boy was eyeing a water bottle lying empty by his feet with wistful eyes, and Levi was not going to have any of that if it could be avoided.

Like -- if there’s no other choice, sure, go for peeing in all the bottles you fucking want to, but the sheer unsanitary -- there’s no doubt there would be urine leaking out, and it’s not that it’s gross, Levi just can’t get the image of little drops of it getting fucking everywhere --

Levi presses a thumb and forefinger into his temples, covering his line of sight.  He really needs to be out of here.

The phone rings.  Reiner picks it up, listening intently for a second before he looks up at Bertholdt.  “They’re ready.”

Finally.

Levi leads them as they file out of the station with hands up above their heads, the bright light of the morning sun stinging their eyes.  Men in black usher them along off to the right, behind the barriers, and all of a sudden they’re out.  Levi glances around.  He supposes he should be used to transitions like that.

Beside him, Hitch shivers, staring blankly at the glass doors as they swing closed.  She’s a solid few inches taller than Levi -- everyone’s a few inches taller than Levi, which becomes obvious now that they’re all on their feet.

No one pays attention to the five of them for a long moment.  From a distance, they watch the chaos occurring on the other side of the lot, Reiner and Bertholdt boarding an SUV, their guns flying in every which direction.  Levi rolls his eyes -- who taught those idiots how to aim?

He should probably be treating the situation with a bit more gravity.

Hitch, at his side, grips the fabric of his shirt over his upper arm.  Very gently, he pries her fingers off of him and leaves her hands dangling at her side.  He gazes into the distance and pauses for a long second before it occurs to him to tear his eyes away from the SUV, standing suspiciously stationary, and glance over at Hitch.

She’s glaring at him with a hurt expression, her lips parted into an offended oblong.

He’s tempted to tell her to get over it, but as the words sit ready on his tongue, he thinks of the first time he had seen combat.  The first time he had been shot at.  Levi sighs, looking away.  He grips her hand and places it forcefully on his upper arm.

“Aw, thanks, Levi.”

He scowls.


	6. Chapter 6

“Mikasa!”

Armin crashes into her as a solid force, sending the both of them stumbling back a few steps before Mikasa gets enough of a grip on him to steady them both.  He buries his face in the crook of her neck, arms tight around her waist.

Mikasa doesn’t say anything back, just hugs him tightly around the shoulders and breathes.

When she does open her eyes, over Armin’s shoulder she can see Jean and Eren hugging each other just as tightly.  She tilts her head, and, just for once, admits to herself that they can be kind of cute.

Eren pulls away from Jean with a jerk.  “Wait!  Hold on!”  Jean does indeed hold on, although probably not in the sense initially intended, gripping tenaciously at Eren’s upper arm.  Mikasa smirks, releasing Armin so he can properly see what's going on.  “Jean!” Eren protests, making a vain attempt at yanking his arm away, but Jean glares at him with reluctant and rather pitiful eyes.  Mikasa can see the moment when he gives up, turns his attention back to the group of them, leaving his arm to be prize to Jean Kirstein.

Eren gazes at her with a complex expression.  Mikasa raises an eyebrow.

He shakes himself, turning quickly from Mikasa to Armin to Jean, addressing them as a group, gaining back his excitement in a split second.  “This is the perfect excuse to not see my dad!”

Jean stares at Eren, releasing his grip.  “Fuck yes!” he shouts, and raises a hand for a high-five that rings across the lot like a gunshot.  Out of the corner of her eye, Mikasa can see a SWAT guy or two whip around much more quickly than she finds herself comfortable with.

“Hey!” Levi shouts from a few feet away.  He’s been joined by an uptight-looking man in a suit and a person whose ratty hair completely obscures their face, the grime cached on their glasses only contributing to the effect.  “Cut that out!”

“Sorry!” Eren shouts back, still smiling, and proceeds fistbump Jean, his bottom lip jammed between his teeth.

Mikasa shakes her head.  What dorks.

\---

Levi keeps a stern eye on the unmoving car.  It’s far enough away, but through the window he can make out the face of who he assumes is Annie.  She’s still in the back seat, her hair done up in a regulation bun, and she looks right fucking pissed.

His mouth quirks into an involuntary smile.  He’s not sure why he finds that so funny, exactly, but it definitely is.  In the distance, Annie’s mouth moves like she’s speaking.  Reiner and Bertholdt, in the front, are the butt of a wry gaze.

“Levi!”

He’s tapped energetically on the shoulder.  Both he and Hitch turn around to find Hanji standing there with a shit-eating grin on their face, bouncing on their heels.

“Hanji,” he says, blinking.  “What are you doing here?”

“I’m your emergency contact.”

“Oh,” he says.  “Well, that’s -- “ he trips up at the word ‘nice.’  “You can probably leave.”

Hanji laughs, loud and boisterous.  Levi blinks.  Beside him, Hitch giggles.

“Fucking incredible,” Hanji says.  They pat him on the shoulder.  “Amazing.”

Levi stares blankly at them.

Across the lot, SWAT guys surround the SUV.  There’s some loud shouting, the general bustle of action.  Stupid plan on Erwin’s part, Levi thinks.  Dangerous.  There’s got to be some catch, some kind of --

“Nice headband,” Hanji comments, interrupting his line of thought.  Levi whips his head back around to see them grinning.  

Levi grunts.  “Lavender is really my color, don’t you think?”

Hanji crosses their arms, grin seeming to crack just a smidgen wider.  “You bet.”  They turn their eyes to Hitch at that point, giving her a once-over before commenting, “Nice friend.”

“Thank you,” Levi says in a tone that, judging by the curious tilt of their head, Hanji can’t quite figure out as being sarcastic or not.  They never get to make a call either way though, as it’s that moment that Erwin finds the time to step up to their quickly-growing group.

“Hello,” he says.

“I trust you haven’t fucked up the arrest beyond all belief?” Levi says, motioning to the scene with the SUV on the other side of the lot.

Erwin cracks a half-smile.  “Wrapping it up right now.”

Levi turns his head to get a look, and does, in fact, find Reiner and Bertholdt being dragged out of the car at gunpoint, thrown on the ground and handcuffed in a flash.  He can make out the uncomfortable flinch of Reiner’s body as his cheek digs into the asphalt.  “Huh,” he says, eyebrows raising the smallest fraction.  The corners of Erwin’s mouth turn up in a decidedly smug expression.

“How exactly did you get them to hand over Annie in the first place?”  If Levi’s suspicion about them being -- well, not bank robbers, for one thing -- is correct, then….

“Pulled some strings.”  A flick of his eyes in Hitch’s direction.  He’s completely ignored her up until now, when (Levi assumes) he’s sitting on some kind of confidential information.  Levi’s fairly convinced she poses a very low-level threat, however, given she’s staring vacantly in the direction of their kidnappers, who are in the process of being shoved into a police car.  “You know.”

Levi grunts.  He honestly has absolutely no idea, and doesn’t particularly care to.

Erwin takes a step closer, shooting another nervous glare off to the side -- this time in Hanji’s direction.  Paranoid bastard -- as if they really care enough to tell on him.  But then Erwin leans down into Levi’s personal space and murmurs to him, “Are you alright?”

Levi stiffens, and quickly rolls his eyes.  “I’m fine.”  Beside him, Hanji snickers and forcibly pats him on the back, a mischievous grin smeared over her lips.  “You better get going before someone gets suspicious.”

Erwin raises an eyebrow.

“Working as the negotiator in a situation where a close friend of yours is a hostage is probably not considered particularly ethical.”  Levi crosses his arms.  “Better get going.”

Erwin smiles, nodding a concession.  “Of course, Levi.”

A few feet away, Eren and Jean high-five each other so hard the noise makes one of the SWAT guys across the lot jump a little.  “Hey, cut that out!” he shouts at them, derogatory thoughts of children running through his head.  He receives a distracted, “Sorry!” in response.

Levi sighs, turning back to Erwin.  “Go deal with your crime scene.”

A small grin.  “Of course, Levi.”

Levi tilts his head.  Erwin is a lot less serious, over here.  Levi’s not really sure he likes the change.

Hanji elbows him in the side.  “Lucky he didn’t kill anyone, huh?”  They say this with a shit-eating grin that only unnerves Levi a little bit.

“Good thing.  Who knows what you’d do with the bodies?”

Hitch glances back at them with wide eyes and pursed lips.

“That was a joke,” Levi clarifies.  She continues to give the both of them an odd look.

Hanji laughs.

\---

"I'm sorry, is it too loud in here?"

"This is fine," Levi says.  He crosses his legs, resting his arms on the chair's armrests.  The rest of the bullpen bustles around them, and the woman across the desk gives him a severe, but not unkind look.

"Sorry, we only have so many rooms."  She pauses, pursing her lips, tapping her pen on the yellow memo pad she has at the ready.  "Can you give me a rundown of what happened?"

Levi takes a breath.  "First -- "

~

"Um," Hitch says.  "Well, they -- they came in, probably.  I -- I'm not sure?  I wasn't there."

The officer across the table from her blinks.  "You walked in halfway through?"

"No, I -- " she stutters.  "I mean, kidna.  I went to smoke."

He nods.  His face is saggy, his beard grizzly and peppered.  It's gross, but Hitch kind of wants to touch it, mostly out of morbid curiosity.

"So you walked in after your smoke break.  How long after they entered would you say that was?"

"Um."  She slouches back in the hard metal chair.  "I don't know."

He flicks his pen.  "Five minutes?  Ten?"  Out of the corner of her eye, her own shape haunts her in the reflection of the mirror.

She shrugs.  "Ten?"

He writes, his pen scratching across the pad.

~

"And then they took my phone!" Jean shouts a tad too loudly as he remembers.  He pats his pockets desperately.  "And I never got it back."

"It'll be taken into evidence anyway," the cop says dismissively, waving a hand.  He doesn't bother to look up from his writing.  "That's the time the 911 call occurred?"

"Yeah."

"And it was Reiner or Bertholdt on the phone?"

"No, it was -- " Jean pauses.  "Have you actually _heard_ the call?"

The cop looks up at him for the first time in quite a while, his eyes squinted suspiciously.  "No."

"It was Levi."

The cop raises an eyebrow, but jots it down anyways.  "And then what happened?"

~

The grisly folds of Hitch's cop's mouth move in a grim kind of flapping motion.  Hitch finds it absolutely fascinating.  "And then what happened?"

Hitch blinks, only kind of mesmerized.  "Um, I dunno.  I was high as fuck."  She shrugs.

Across the table, her cop's lips part in a disbelieving oblong.  It takes her a full second to completely register exactly how stupid of a thing that had been to say.  "Um," she says once again, feeling her face flush a worried red and jams one thumb into the palm of her other hand.  "Are you gonna -- "

"We're not allowed to prosecute misdemeanors discovered in the investigation of a felony."

Hitch's mouth goes dry.  She stares at him with wide, pitiable, only slightly confused eyes.

"We're -- you're not going to get in trouble.”

She smiles.

The old man sighs, like having this whole conversation is causing him minor amounts of actual physical pain.  "So, after that?"

~

Eren shrugs.  "The phone rung a lot."

The cop nods.  "Erwin showed up."  The scratch of pen on paper.  "Then what?"  He glances up with eyes just as bored as Eren's.

"Oh!" Eren sits up in his chair.  "At some point, Levi tried to jack Reiner's gun."

Eren's not entirely sure, but he thinks he can see a vein in the cop's jaw throb.  "When was that?"

He waves his hands absently, shrugging.  "I dunno."

~

"It was like -- " Hitch raises her hands and mimics diving over the edge of the interrogation room table with a whooshing noise.  "And then the -- " she knocks her fist against her forehead, meant to represent the chair that had crashed into his head.  "And I was like -- " she presses herself up against the back of her chair, her hands held up awkwardly at level with her neck, "yooooo."

The cop glares at her.

Reluctantly, he jots it down.

~

"No, it wasn't the chair, it was the edge of the counter."  His head is bandaged up now, and he hasn't shown any concussion symptoms.  He should be fine.

The shuffling of notes.  "That's not what -- "

"It wasn't their head," Levi scowls.

"Right."

"And after that?"

"The negotiator showed up."

~

Jean slams the door a little too loudly behind him, coming back into the room with his cop staring vacantly at his own cup of coffee.  "Sorry, adrenaline can only hold off nature's call for so long."

"It's no problem," the cop says.  "So, what happened after the negotiator entered the picture?"

Jean pulls out the chair, and pauses.  "Uh, I dunno."

The cop glares at him, deadpan.  "You don't know."

Jean crosses his arms.  "What?!  We were on a roadtrip, I hadn't slept in who knows how many hours!  Your memory starts to go a little wonky after a while...." he trails off, gazing at himself in the two-way mirror.  He stares at it for a long second before squinting back at the investigator, "There's nobody in there, right?"

He sighs.  "No."  The tip of the pen makes a dull thudding sound against the paper of the memo pad.  "Okay, so what's the next thing you remember?"

Jean pauses, thinking.  "Eren deciding he was going to get a gun held to his head -- or something."  He swallows.  "Are you sure there's no one back there?"

"Yes," the cop says, annoyed.  "I'm sure.  Now, what were you saying about -- "

"Yeah, Levi was all like, 'someone should go and get threatened so everyone knows that the two of them are really serious' -- " he says in a caricature of a voice that, in all honestly, sounds nothing at all like anything Levi would ever say.  "And Eren jumped on the chance like fuckin' -- I don't know."  He crosses his arms.  "It was dumb."

The cop sits up, leaning forward in his chair.  "You said Levi suggested this?"

Jean shrugs.  "Yeah, well -- we were all really sick of being in there and the two of them didn't seem to be really keen on letting us fucking _pee_  anytime soon."

~

"One of the other hostages said that you had suggested Braun and Fubar hold someone at gunpoint -- "

Levi rolls his eyes.  "Yes, I did."

The way she rolls her shoulders communicates a decent amount of suspicion but, again, her gaze is not unkind.  "You can see how that might -- "

"I'm not working with them," Levi cuts her off.  "I told them to do a few things because they were fucking clueless, and I wasn't willing to get my head blown off because those morons had forgotten to close the blinds."  He leans forward.  "I have a friend in the negotiating business.  I know how these things can end."  The lady gives him a look that concedes a bit of sympathy.  "And they weren't letting us pee."

Despite herself, the cop lets out a little snicker.  “I -- I’m sorry,” she quickly backpedals, “that was hugely inappropriate -- “

“No, it’s fine,” Levi says in a single exasperated exhale.

“Um,” she says, shuffling papers around, which seems to be a way for her to cover while she regains her composure.  “What friend do you have who -- “

“In Afghanistan,” Levi says, cutting her off.  “There were plenty of negotiators.  Over there.”  It’s not a lie.

Her teeth snap shut with a little clicking noise and her chin tilts down.  She writes something.

~

“Then they told us all that the negotiator was willing to hand Annie over to them, and we were released about a half an hour after that.”

Subdued nodding, a pen scratching at paper.  “Alright, thanks.  I think we’re finally done.”

Mikasa nods, twiddling with the sleeve of her shirt.

“Is there any chance you’d be able to testify at the trial?”

Keeping her hands far away from the edge of the table, she asks, “Will it be here?”

“Yeah, probably.  Leonhart’s crime was a federal one, but since Braun and Fubar haven’t crossed state lines....”  The cop shrugs.  “And we're doing the investigation.  They’ll most likely be tried in this state.”

“I live in California,” she says.

“It wouldn’t be that hard for you to -- “

“I am a poor college student in a Pre-Med program,” she says.  “I can’t afford to stay here, and I can’t afford to miss classes.”  The cop gives her a dissatisfied stare, but doesn’t offer any comment.  “Get someone who actually lives here.”  She pauses, thinking.  “Or Kirstein, he’s a liberal arts major.”

~

“So what exactly...did she do?” Hitch asks.  The cop flicks the pen repeatedly against the table, standing up like he’s just had about four cups of coffee, but Hitch just thinks he might be eager to get out of there.

“Uh, espionage.”

She pauses.  “What?”

“Spying.  On the US government.”  He clicks his tongue, standing up.  “For Germany, I think.”

Hitch blinks again.  “The fuck -- “

\---

“Some strings you pulled,” Levi comments, not looking at Erwin as he fills up a paper cup at the water cooler.

Erwin hums into the rim of his cup of coffee, careful to stare out at the bullpen rather than out the window, in Levi’s direction.  “Friends in high places,” he says.

“You got a fucking spy out of prison.”

Erwin shrugs.  Levi catches the motion out of the corner of his eye.  He lifts his finger off the plastic lever and watches the water ripple in the cup.  “What can I say.”

Levi slowly turns around, still not meeting Erwin’s eyes.  “Thank you,” he says.  He does not leave enough time for Erwin to respond before stalking away.


	7. Chapter 7

Hitch rings the doorbell with a hand only shaking slightly, a backpack slung casually over one shoulder.  She glances down at her hand -- the address is definitely right.  The green-tinged numbers hanging above the door match the ones bleeding across the back of her hand.  Although, maybe the smearing fucked up one of the numbers, and she's --

The door swings open suddenly, with an uncomfortable finality.  Levi stares at her with a rather neutral expression from the doorway, and she raises a shaky hand in a half-assed peace sign.  "Yo."

Levi rolls his eyes and moves to let her in.

Hitch steps inside, past Levi standing a noticeable number of inches shorter than her, and immediately feels extremely out of place.  The carpet is painfully white, not a spot or stain anywhere on it -- or anywhere period.  It's -- kind of weird actually.  The entire place smells overwhelmingly of _clean_.  It's not that everything is extremely neat or anything:  there are papers scattered in all kinds of random places, an empty coffee cup left out in the kitchen.  All-in-all it lacks that kind of obsessive neatness Hitch might have expected to go hand-in-hand with that level of clean.  But, still....

"Nice place," Hitch comments.  It's only kind of a lie.

Levi grunts, slamming the door behind her so hard she jumps, whirling around to look at him.  It was out of reflex -- she had been a little jumpy since the whole gas station thing.  Levi seems to have no reaction to the whole incident, only staring at her with a measured, disinterested expression.  "Your forehead is healing," she offers.

He touches his fingers to the thick scab crusting his temple.  “Yeah.”  His hands are so small -- and he’s so short.  He wonders if his hands are smaller than hers.  “We should get started.”

Hitch jerks back to reality.  “Uh, yeah.  Right.”

\---

“Oh my god.”  Hitch says and laughs.  Levi leans back in the armchair, puffing smoke out from between his lips with a nonchalant elegance.  He breaks down into a coughing fit a second later, covering his mouth with the back of his hand, and passes the mostly burned-down joint back to Hitch.

“I’m high,” Levi says, rather unwittingly.

“Yeah,” Hitch says, and takes another drag.  “Me too.”

“Huh.”  Levi leans back in the chair again, staring up at the ceiling.  Or, at least, somewhere adjacent to it.  He’s not sure he’s staring at anything, exactly.  Beside him, Hitch is sprawled over the floor, chin and forearms hooked over the fat arm of the chair.  She hands him the joint, now only a little stub.

“I think I like it,” he says, and inhales.

Hitch giggles again.

“Why are you laughing so hard?” he asks, frowning down at her.

“You’re fuckin’ high,” she laughs, taking the remains of the joint from Levi with fingers shaky with laughter.  “You shouldn’t be high.”

“I’ve just smoked pot.  Of course I’m fucking high,” he spits.  Hitch snubs the joint out against a coaster, mumbling something about how it’s dead.

“No, like -- you don’t seem like you should be high.  You’re like -- “ she makes vaguely stiff gestures with her arms which vaguely resemble how someone would dance like a robot.  “You know.”

“Not really,” he says.

Another moment passes in silence.  Levi listens to the sound of his own breath in his lungs.  This is a fairly pleasurable experience.  He’s not sure how good he would do if he tried to stand up, though, and it makes him feel frustrated and kind of helpless.  Disconnected.  

“Hey, do you wanna…”  Hitch says, and Levi turns his head slowly towards her, watching her make more vague hand gestures with a brain that feels a bit like a burnt-out lightbulb.  “You know?”

“What?” Levi asks.

She rolls her eyes.  “Have sex,” she says like it is the most obvious thing in the world, punctuating the latter word with an intoxicated roll of her head.

Levi’s eyebrows furrow together in a consternation line.  “No.”

Her lips form into an exaggerated frown.

“I’m gay as fuck,” he adds on.

“Oh,” Hitch says.  “That’s fine.  That cool.”

Levi rolls his eyes.  “Glad I have your approval.”

They lay there for another long moment before Hitch speaks up again.  “You wanna turn on the TV?”

Levi runs his tongue over his teeth.  “Yeah.  Let’s do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's taken me a frankly ridiculously long time to finish, but it's done! thank you all so much for reading, and many many thanks to tumblr user sinistercacaphony for being my beta, letting me bounce ideas off her, and generally being the funny one in our friendship. it means a lot that she actually helped me finish this monstrosity. :)
> 
> and, speaking of, there will definitely be more fic that takes place in this universe coming from me, so keep an eye out for that!

**Author's Note:**

> please don't take this too seriously i did about twenty minutes of research and it turned into a monstrosity


End file.
